John Boehner is facing his toughest week yet as speaker of the House of Representatives -- and that's saying a lot after a tumultuous four years of repeated efforts by his own Republican colleagues to derail his legislative agenda.

House Speaker John Boehner and his top lieutenants are downplaying the rift among Republicans that was exposed during last week's intense wrangling over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

The House cleared legislation Tuesday that will keep the agency operating through the end of September after a standoff last week threatened to shutter the agency and furlough thousands of workers. The 257-167 vote sends the bill to President Barack Obama for his signature.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner, who rarely casts votes, backed the bill, along with his top lieutenants. A majority of House Republicans opposed the bill. Just 75 GOP lawmakers joined with 182 Democrats to push it across the finish line.

The legislation does nothing to rein in Obama's immigration executive orders -- a top priority of conservatives. That issue was a sticking point for weeks as Republicans tried to tie DHS funding to the repeal of the orders but the party couldn't overcome Democratic filibusters in the Senate.

The debate sparked plenty of drama on Capitol Hill over the past week. The House stayed in session late into the night on Friday after conservatives helped block a bill that would have kept DHS open for 3 weeks. Amid rumors of a potential coup, Speaker John Boehner pushed through a bill that kept the agency open until March 6 -- just enough time to work out today's deal.

Boehner told his members Tuesday morning that he had run out of options and the Senate couldn't pass a bill with immigration language attached.

He asked if anyone had any questions and not one member stood up or complained.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson praised the vote in an email to the department's employees.

"Without a doubt, the path to get here was an 11th-hour roller-coaster ride," he wrote. "But, in the end Congress provided a strong bipartisan vote of confidence in our department and your work."

The chairman of the House committee investigating Benghazi said Tuesday revelations that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used multiple personal email accounts to conduct government business are troubling.

House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy said his committee knew that Clinton used personal email to conduct government business last summer, but only recently learned that she did not also use an official government account.

"She used only private email accounts and she had more than one private email account," Gowdy said.

A Clinton aide says Gowdy is wrong, and that she did not use multiple email accounts.

The committee, which is investigating the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, plans to request the emails from Clinton and the email service providers she used, Gowdy said. He added that Clinton's use of personal email accounts makes it harder for the committee to gather the facts.

"You do not need a law degree to have an understanding of how troubling this is," he said.

Gowdy said the fact that other congressional investigations of Benghazi never uncovered Clinton's email use proves that further inquiry is needed.

He said he does not plan to publicly release Clinton emails.

The New York Times first reported the news Tuesday and Gowdy said his committee was not the source of the story.

This pocket of 2,000 men and women constitutes the nation's biggest concentration of homeless people living and sleeping on public sidewalks, in scattered camps under tarps.

Not surprisingly, sanitary conditions are appalling.

This quarter of despair is now at the center of national attention for another reason: This week, Los Angeles police and a homeless man in a tent engaged in a confrontation, ending with officers fatally shooting the man known only as "Africa," an apparent reference to his home continent.

It was all captured on video by bystanders. Police allege "Africa" tried to reach for an officer's gun, prompting the police gunfire against him.

"Skid Row is a 54-block area that has the largest homeless number of individuals in the country," said Jerry Jones, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

He's based in New York City.

"New York City has the largest homeless population, but Los Angeles has the highest unsheltered population in the country, which has led to the destitution you see today," he added.

New York City's unique right-to-shelter mandate ensures "temporary emergency shelter to every man, woman, and child who is eligible for services, every night," the city's website says.

But not in Los Angeles, where two-thirds of the county's 40,000 homeless people are unsheltered, Jones said.

So many live on the streets of downtown Los Angeles -- and elsewhere.

Land of contrasts

In some American minds, Los Angeles may conjure up images of a great American city cursed with an abandoned urban core.

That's an old memory.

Today, downtown Los Angeles enjoys a renaissance, right down to the new hotels and mall surrounding the Staples Center, where professional basketball and hockey are played, often to championships.

But not on Skid Row. (That's its official designation. Even Google maps label it so.)

There are few champion moments here.

The only exception may be the everyday heroes who labor in 107 charities and agencies feeding and comforting the lost souls bivouacked on the street.

The triple-digital number of social service agencies, however, is often cited as one reason that Los Angeles endures as the nation's Skid Row capital: There's a $54-million-a-year charitable infrastructure anchored to the poverty district.

Nobody seems to be going anywhere.

One man's fall and rise

That doesn't deter Ryan Navales, manager of government and public affairs for the Midnight Mission, which strives to lift people out of poverty.

His work and those of his peers is like that of Sisyphus to the rock, the mythic figure whose endless labor was to push a rock to the top of a mountain and then have to do it all over again after the rock rolled downhill.

"Skid Row has become less transient," Navales said. "The history of skid row goes back to a transient neighborhood associated with the railroad. The true definition of transient is short term. Now it's long term. It's become a neighborhood."

Navales cites a shortage of affordable housing as a reason for how "there's no place for people to go."

He asserts his agencies and others offers hope to those who feel hopeless.

Navales knows from personal experience.

He once worked for Microsoft as a network administrator in the 1990s, but he lost it all, including his family.

Drug addiction obliterated his life.

"After destroying my family, in and out of jail, in and out of treatment, I was living on the streets and doing what people have to do on the streets to support a really gnarly heroin habit," Navales said.

"In August of 2011, I was brought to the Midnight Mission homeless," he added. "I had a backpack on."

He now wears a suit, on Skid Row's front line, trying to relieve and unravel the nation's Gordian knot of poverty.

The cuts will come over the next two years and will primarily be at corporate headquarters in Minneapolis, where about 13,000 people work. Target employs 366,000 people worldwide.

The changes are part of a larger restructuring, that aims to save $2 billion over two years, CEO Brian Cornell said at a meeting with investors.

Cornell was named CEO in July after his predecessor was ousted following a massive breach of Target's customer data during the 2013 holiday shopping season. Profits took a hit in early 2014, but rebounded halfway through the year.

Target most recently reported a strong holiday season, with a 3% jump in sales from the previous year.

More details about exactly how may positions will be impacted and the timing of the cuts will be announced in the coming weeks and months, a spokeswoman said.